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Date Submitted :
May 5th, 2010
Length of time hosted by this company :
6 - 12 months
Overall Rating :
4 out of 5
Reliability :
4 out of 5
Support :
3 out of 5
Pricing :
4 out of 5
Verdict :
I have mixed feelings about how PowWeb operates. I sell different types of seasonal merchandise on my web site. Some of these items are trademarked and/or copyrighted and the appropriate notice is given on my web site in accordance to the agreement that I have with our suppliers. This past summer, some "big wig" trademark company out in California made unsubstantiated claims and demanded that the infringing merchandise be removed from my web site immediately or other action would be taken. I explained to them that we do, in fact, have permission and every right to sell the merchandise in question, but this fell on deaf ears. This company contacted PowWeb regarding this issue and demanded that either the merchandise in question be removed or my web site be taken down for threat of legal action againt PowWeb if they did not comply. Instead of sending me an inquiry as to my activities (legal as they are), my web site was taken off so that no one could view it and without ANY kind of warning. Not only was the "so-called" infringing merchandise removed but my ENTIRE web site was taken down without legitimate reason or cause. I had to threaten both the company out in California (by once AGAIN providing proof of my sales agreement) and PowWeb before my web site was turned back on. I lost over a week's worth of sales (and during one of my biggest sales months of the year) without ANY apologies from those people out in California or PowWeb for the gross errors THEY had made.
My question to PowWeb is (and has been without any reply from them) just HOW they can take the "word" from some company that obviously didn't know what they were doing (and who didn't even provide PowWeb with PROOF of their claims!) over MY word that I was doing everything LEGITIMATELY?! But oh, no! PowWeb just covered their ass so they wouldn't get into trouble and gave in to the unprofen and unsubstantiated CLAIMS of a third party!
As of late, both myself and others have been having MAJOR problems with our e-mail service. This had been going on and off for a couple of weeks and as of this morning we are once again having problems in receiving mail at our sales address. Turns out that (this time) it was the fault of our domain hosting provider and now PowWeb.
I think that the biggest complaint that we have is that each and every time we call their Technical Support people, they always talk in broken English (sounds like they're from East India), they NEVER have any concrete answers (they are supposed to be TECHNICAL support personnel after all), and ALWAYS have to refer to someone else for answers and they, in turn, never come to the phone. It's always the originating "tech" representative that comes back on the line. I do acknowledge that they are trying very hard to help me out, don't get me wrong. But when I call for technical support, I expect to talk WITH someone in technical support and not someone who is only going to relay my information back and forth to the real tech people. I have since found another telephone number for PowWeb and, although it's NOT a toll free call (no matter, I have unlimited long distance with my telephone provider), I usually can speak with someone that is fluent in the English language.
My 1-year subscription to their service runs out in a couple of months and I am seriously considering switching to another service.
I was a pleased customer with PowWeb for many years but lately I have been having considerable problems with their email service. This is the first time I really needed their tech support and they just keep feeding the "everything works here" line and the responses make it evident that they did not even read my tickets since they keep asking for information I have already provided.
This is frustrating for me and others whose mailboxes I am hosting and will most likely result in me moving to another provider as soon as I find a reliable one.
My site has been down for days. I finally got a response from customer support informing me I had been bulk mailing with a script so they had shut me down.
I have never done this and asked them to verify it was my domain and identify the accounts that were used.
I got no repsonse except a customer satifaction survey and my site is still down.
I've been with PowWeb since it WAS PowWeb, in California, before it was taken over by the Endurance group. Back then, the host had it's ups and downs, the staff took ownership when problems occured and were helpful.
Today, I have a site which I have not changed anything on, but yet something breaks and I'm to blame, and every call is the blame game. When they run out of excuses, they pull the grand finale, "This is a shared hosting account", somehow it is acceptable to have a single simple (normally 0.02 second) SQL query take 90 seconds to run when you're on shared hosting.
Second level support has no direct contact with the customer unless you pay more, your only method of contact is via a very simple "ticket" interface. They ignore what you write and tend to put answers only a Magic 8 Ball could come up with.
We are NOT allowed to post information from our tickets in the Forums as it is a violation of their policy. So if you have issues with how something was handled, you dare not speak publicly about it. You are also not allowed to talk about the overall ownership of the business. PowWeb is one of many fronts for the Endurance International Group. You are NOT allowed to mention Endurance or your post will be deleted and you risk being suspended.
You are unable to go up the chain of command, there is NO customer serivce, only what is labeled as Tech Support. If you want to escalate an issue they put it in the ticket, the ticket gets updated and there is no dialog between you and those above. Management (Endurance) is isolated from the customer base and many platform level issues are apparently ignored or not forwarded up the chain for review. When contacting the management offices directly, you just get dumped to voice mail, there are no live attendants, if you do get a live person, it is just one of their call center reps who open a ticket and forward it up.
If I had a choice and could get my entire year refunded, I would be hopping on the first reliable host I could find.
Stay far away from this plague, and do your research, make sure your new host is not affiliated with the following:
yourhostingaccount.com, accountsupport.com, enduranceinternational.com, fatcow.com, bizland.com, maileig.com, ipower.com, ipowerweb.net, and a number of others... Check the whois for any web host you may choose and if any of these show up, keep far far away.
I haven't has quite the horrible experiences that some others have with PowWeb, but they have definitly gone downhill in the last sale/reorg.
- POP email stops working for an hour or so, while Web Email is OK.
- Sometimes response is VERY slow, for 5 to 15 minutes.
- A couple times the entire site (including their sales etc) was totally unreachable from here in Asia, for about 5 hours.
But the OPS control and stuff is good. The supported installs I've used (Joomla, Gallery2) worked well, including upgrades.
This used to be such a great host that I recommended it to everyone. Support was excellent and problems were few and far between. It rarely went down or had email server problems.
Now that it has been sold to some huge company, support is non-existent. Sure, I can speak in an online chat with someone 24/7, except that the "support" "techs" don't even speak intelligible English and are in India. I am not exaggerating. I have had emails and chats with people who simply do not speak the language and cannot understand simple questions, not to mention respond in an intelligible manner.
The servers go down weekly now. As I type my email is non-functional. I am looking to move to a new service as soon as possible, but I will be very picky. I don't want to repeat this bad experience.
I have had 5 domains hosted with Powweb over the past 4 years. Powweb was a great host until they were acquired 2 years ago by a mega-corporation Endurance International Group, Inc. The corporation is known for buying out a quality hosting services and then market the daylights out of it.
Now the reliability is pitiful and it takes multiple support contacts to even have them acknowledge that there is a problem/outage before tier 2 & tier 3 support get involved. Either an email server or web server fails about every 30-45 days. Tech support is in India and Philippines and they are not given information when there is a systemic outage etc.
I have migrated 3 of the domains away and heve been happy with the service of the other hosts. The only reason my big domain is still with Powweb is because the staff bursts into tears when I try to prepare them for importing contacts on webmail and changing their email settings on work, home and mobile computers.
Powweb is providing pitiful service since 2006 although their pricing is low.
The combination of Powweb's technical bumbling and its uninformed customer service have helped me to the conclusion that it is time to move on to another provider. They are currently blaming their mysql issues on their customers, never the mark competence.
I have only had Powweb for about 4 or 5 months and it has been a horrible experience. Since the beginning there has been incredibly slow load times on any site using mysql. Since then things have steadily gotten worse. This month my site has been down LITERALLY 50% of the time. Then when you try to talk to tech support they give you scripted answers and try to blame the problem on you. I have saved all of the transcripts of these conversations and will be sure to make them public. NO ONE should consider signing up with them. AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE!
If uptime is important to you, stay clear of Powweb. My site has been down for long periods of time. If you read their forums, customer complaints are frequent and Powweb does little respond.
For price and bandwidth, Powweb is great. But I still wouldn't be able to recommend Powweb since there are so many other hosting providers you can use.
This used to be a good service, but it seems like they forgot how important quality of service should be.
I've been with PowWeb for about 4 years now, with two web sites and a forum and have seen my web sites disappear and my mail access cut off many times, with no explanation. Usually these only lasted for a few hours. But as I write this, we are in the middle of a PowWeb marathon down time period. It has been nearly 24 hours now with no web sites or forum, and no e-mail. PowWeb's own websites and forums have also disappeared. I live outside of the United States, and am not inclined to pick up the phone and call PowWeb's customer support. I am sure they are flooded with calls anyway. This happens too often, and this final outage is the final straw.
Do yourself a favor and see which host has the best ratings before you sign up. I guarantee it will not be PowWeb. I will be going elsewhere as soon as I read those ratings, too!
Back in June 2005, I signed up for Powweb. I left 3 months later. Not because the service provided was bad, but because I had figured out how to host my web site from home using my DSL connection.
I recently started to search for a web host company, because Iíve decided to stop self-hosting. Because of my ìOKî experience with Powweb, they were the ìcompany to beatî in searching for a hosting company. I had asked a reseller question on the forum back in January 2007, and the responses were polite, if not somewhat confusing.
Anyway, over the past month or so, I had been doing a lot of research and monitoring of hosting company forums, trying to decide which one gets my money. During this research, I noticed a disturbing trend on the Powweb forum. The moderators appeared to be overly oppressive when it came to members criticizing Powweb. Because of this, Powweb went from being on the top of my prospects to being completely dropped from consideration.
This past Sunday, I saw a thread on the forum titled ìClosing threads that are critical of powwebî. So, I took a look, and it fit right in with what I had already concluded. Trying to provide some constructive criticism to the moderators, I posted to the thread my observations as a former customer, and that the moderators might want to consider the signal they are sending to potential customers.
This post prompted an arrogant, condescending reply from the moderator ìDoc Cî. I responded to his post, by calmly trying to explain and defend my post. This post was blocked for over an hour, and was only released after I called Powweb support to file a formal complaint. When it was finally released, I was then attacked by another moderator, ìIanSî. I offered another post in defense, and was attacked by IanS again. At this point, it occurred to me that this was extremely odd behavior by the moderators, so I stopped posting anything. I was absolutely stunned by what followed. Doc C and IanS made a couple of posts intimating that they, as moderators, were not above inflaming a thread for amusement.
If that wasnít enough, IanS further tried to taunt me into another post by doing something that Iíve never seen a moderator do on any forum I have ever visited. This moderator posted that the thread would be closed in about 10 hours, so if anyone wanted to make any more comments, do so before then.
I waited until the thread was closed, and on Monday morning I called the Endurance main office. I reaffirmed my desire to follow through on my formal complaint on both Doc C and IanS, letting Endurance CS know, in no uncertain terms, that these moderators are juvenile, unprofessional, and projecting a very negative image for Powweb.
Powweb is the most unprofessional web hosting company in existence today. They wonít be around much longer with the image they and their moderators are projecting to the world.
I had the chance to have 2 sites hostend on their super slow servers enhached by their super cool balancing techonlogy ..tm, whatever that is intended to mea.
Yes all powweb is balancing somehow, i guess they are situated in some tree top, holding all the wires together..and when the wind is high or too many chickenss on a side,...theyr fukin balancing so your website is balancing too and everyone is balancing..and you will balance in fron of your pc, and balancing you`ll call the support or maybe even want to use the superchat 24/7 with balanced technology, balancing itself option. Then a guy from India will answer to you ,balancing, and tell you ro roll on the floor 3 times or sniff some crack and turn yourself into a happy client, coz they have broblems with things...they are balancing all over the place. but maybe tomorrow you will have your site up and running...but that damn wind!!!
Is like that if you dare to use databasesl. If you don`t, it will just work just very slow and you`ll have a little less downtime.
If you are serious about having a website up, you should choose a more down to earth webhosting company that is not balancing everywhere to have your site up slow or not at all. Forget about powweb and 1and1. 1and1 will do nothing from what you ask, if you have a problem, in about 24-48 hours.
For 2.5 years they were fine. Then suddenly our database driven site was timing out time after time. Html files were ok, but anything that required access to the db server was frequently timing out. We asked support what was going on and to fix it. They said they were changing servers (a job that only lasts a day or so at most) yet two weeks later it was just as bad. (Earlier they had indicated they were changing servers and gave us notification of it, but the second domain there was missing files and wasn't working properly after they moved it.)
Top level support were great and very competent but you only get them if the bottom end can't deal with it. Bottom end support were often ignorant and some were unable to understand English and misunderstood even the most basic things we asked to have done, fixed or to get information on.
After we were forced to move our domain to a more reliable host they immediately deleted ALL our content before we had even a chance to get all the current info off it. Then wanted us to pay to have it restored because we no longer had an account. After we finally got it restored it was no longer operational and our CRM and admin panel wouldn't work.
We still have one of our domains there but it is almost entirely html but we will move it when it comes up for paying again.
BTW when we asked for a refund they gave us less than 6 months of one year back and we had only 6 months earlier renewed for 3 years. BEWARE: with this kind of action you could lose all or most of what you pay into them. Save yourself the grief, go somewhere else.... and share knowledge of this domain around to anyone who might consider hosting a new site.
I've been a loyal powweb customer for a long time and stuck it out after they were bought out. I've "endured" the new owner, Endurance, since last August with frequent problems and pathetic customer support (phone support is good, email ticket support is horrible). Despite upgrading some equipment the problems continue. Now a new problem with their database server has rendered my account near non-functional for over a week. If you have a static html site you're ok but if you connect to mysql you might be one of the unlucky customers who are coming to webhostingjury.com to find a replacement.
I just wish I did this sooner. I waited, I hoped the problems would go away but every time one clears up a new and more severe one takes its' place. I already have moved some sites and I plan on moving the rest now.
for the past three months, they have been "working on" CGI pools which means anything using msqyl varies between fine and nonfunctioning for hours at at time. Customer service is nice, but the response is "we are working on a plan."
though i like the control panel (excellent backup system) it is the slowest servers i have ever been on
for 6 months, i have complaining about speed (i made the mistake of paying for 3 years in advance) and they keeps saying that the engineers are fixing it. Not once have a i accessed the the site without extreme loading times. Every visitors complains about the speed.
Customer service is not helpful at all and very rude quite rude, they dont answer if i ask them to change my server
Powweb was fine until they sold out to an east coast conglomerate. Many problems since then -- they migrated a site that I had already set for non-renewal (the domain had already expired). It took four months to straighten that out and stop them from demanding money. I moved my own site to Dreamhost at that time, planning to move the others when their hosting was close to expiration. I got the automated billing email and called to say I wanted to cancel the account as I'd already moved the site to another host. They gave me a cancellation number, assured me the card would not be billed, then a week later billed me anyway. I moved my remaining two sites to Dreamhost over the weekend, and have exchanged endless emails and chats with the powweb people trying to get their unauthorized auto-billing refunded. They are claiming it takes 7 to 10 business days to process a refund (BS), and that it was somehow my fault for logging into the control panel and *LOOKING* at my credit card page (I was trying to figure out how to remove the card number info). It is harder to quit these guys than it was to finally get rid of AOL. Incredible.
Other problems: when you call, they ask you for your account password for "verification". This can only mean that they store this information in plain text and it is visible to everyone who works in the callcenter (powweb used to support customers with their own staff, the company that owns it now outsources *everything*). So, anyone who works in the callcenter can easily spoof their way into your account and get whatever personal information they want. I think this is a huge problem, and have told them it's extremely bad IT practice to make customer passwords available to basically anyone. I have no idea if these call centers hire, for example, prisoners or ex-felons, or do any kind of background check on the people they hire.
Powweb's customer support, tech support and billing support are outsourced to http://www.advantagecall.com/
Avoid Powweb, and any company associated with them. According to their file at the Boston area bbb, these are:
The Endurance International Group, Inc. (the company that bought Powweb and all these other hosting companies)
PowWeb changed ownership a few months ago, and it was not at all transparent for customers. The control panel is far too complex and confusing. Their email setup is now rather bizarre. They are now forcing a change in passwords for accounts. They shut off email notifications for my weblog, treating me as a spammer, without any notice whatsoever. Customer service can be reached, and they are helpful. But overall, PowWeb has something of a control freak mentality.
Summary: Used to be good, now sucks. They don't have enough resources.
Long story: My website is a medical education website with nothing but a forum (SMF) and a Joomla frontend. Students are allowed to download lectures and assignments from the website.
The problem is that one day, they suspended my account. When I asked them why they did it they said: "Your website is ruining performance on the entire cgi pool..that it was effecting all the other 10,000 users on it as well". When I asked them if it was a script problem, they said "It is not the script that is present in your web directory that has caused your Web site to go offline. But, it is the number of hits that you are Web site is receiving which our servers are unable to cope up with. We do require that you find an alternate hosting company that can support the amount of hits your site receives". They simply couldn't handle 4336 page views per day and 676,480 hits per month.
We stayed with Powweb for years and just accepted the crappy customer service as a part of getting hosting for $7.77 per month - in addition to the complicated web interface, the inept live help and the frequent downtime.
The recent migration really drove home how much Powweb really sucks, to the point where we moved our whole site to Siteground.
The whole thing was handled in the most unprofessional and inept manner possible. We were actually in direct contact with the VP of Customer Service, who was unable to assist in any meaningful way. It appears that there is no communcation between departments, as when we did get a response we would always have to start from the beginning. Billing never returned many of our inquiries and customer service would take days if at all. Calling them did not help as we would be on hold for 20 minutes plus, which is unacceptable for international customers. The live help staff is simply not equipped to do much except refer customers to the tech staff, who are either totally clueless or totally overworked as we never got our problems resolved.
They did not even notice that we were no longer hosting our site with them as they continued to send us reminders about the migration that they had thoroughly screwed up months before. We also previously had a problem with registration of a domain that Powweb screwed up and then refused to compensate us. Now that we are with Siteground and have a reliable, sensible company with which to compare, we now wonder why we would have given our credit card and site information to such a disorganised company in the first place.
We would not recommend any company where the customer's basic satisfaction is not paramount, as Powweb repeatedly showed us that they absolutely could not care less about us.
I would highly recamend Powweb. Unlike the people above, I have had nothing but good thing things about them.
First off, their uptime is just like they say it is: 99.9%. When I went down for 2 hours. 2 HOURS! They were very sorry, and emailed everyone that was affected and told them that they get 6 monthes free. Just like that. I know that I didn't complain or even ask for it because I knew stuff like this happens. So right off the bat that occured.
Another time, I screwed something up. I emailed the support team and asked what I should do. He wrote me an email back that said he fixed it for me and their was no need to worry about it.
Finally, the migration. While it did not go super smoothly, it went very well. I had a problem, and again, the tech's fixed it before I did anything.
The only thing that I do not like is the fact that you only get 5 MySQL databases and you only get 400gb/month. While that isn't a low number, to get just 10gb more, it costs $20.
All I can say is that I am going to be a customor of Powweb for a long time.
I'm somewhere around 4 years with Powweb. It appears that about every 6 months or so, they like to ruffle feathers.
If it's not DOS Attacks, it's something else. My site has been unavailable quite often since I've been with them.
Now they are migrating everyone to a new platform and guess what... The technicians are telling me that my site will not work on their new platform. I'm running vbulletin with vbAdvanced, Photopost and vbseo As you can see, my demands are not that high.
If you have a small non-complex site that you don't mind having go down a few times a year for days/weeks at a time, then for 7.77, powweb is perfect for you. If you need reliability or customer service, look elsewhere because these clowns are as unreliable as they are clueless.
The bottom line is this... Powweb can take their 7.77 and purchase each one of their 'support people' new personalities. They are young and quite stupid. RUN FOR THE HILLS
I was with Brinet.com up until the dot com bust of April 2001, when they went belly up. I switched a couple of months later to Powweb. Things were ok until some spam pirate sent out an e-mail that listed my website (along with other websites) in the BODY of the message. Note that nothing was sent from my website. And this wasn't some kind of sales pitch offer either -- it was just an e-mail sent by some nutcase to a bunch of people and my web address was listed (along with a lot of other websites, seemingly selected at random). So I got this unfriendly e-mail "warning" from a Powweb "abuse" official telling me to stop sending out such e-mails or to tell my "partners" to stop doing so! I tried explaining to the "official" that my website had nothing to do with this -- all he had to do was look at the original e-mail then look at my website (which at that time merely publicized some microcinema film screenings in a working class part of L.A.). The abuse official was adamant -- he would not listen to reason. I had to somehow make this person stop! I couldn't believe it -- I had nothing to do with this. I tried complaining to Customer Service about this policy and about this one abuse official in particular. Surely they would respond to reason. Their reaction -- they simply skimmed my letter, didn't really read anything other than "abuse" and forwarded my complaint back to the Powweb Abuse official! Unbelievable. I still have my e-mails saved from these jokers. From their grammar and spelling (not to mention illogical arguments) I got the feeling that they were all frustrated recently graduated IT kids...probably bored out of their minds and not taking their jobs seriously. Horrible customer service all around. Their prices were ok, I guess. I switched to A Small Orange (both my websites) and they never asked why.
Stay away from Powweb.!!!run do not walk!!! Where do i even start: wow.. from a hacker getting my credit card number.. to slow server, to nothing but down time... To rude tecnicans from powweb... to being cheated out of money by them in refund that i was promised after they canceled my account with them:
they canceled my account claiming my scripts which were chat scripts were messing up there server.... when other people i know who had the same type of scripts were doing just fine.. well at that time they were.. but after a while i hear powweb even got onto them and told them to remove there scripts....
then days later i get a call from powweb... and when i get home i return there call ... the person who answered the phone basically called me a liar telling me no one from powweb had called me... and he went on and on basically in a rage thinking i was lieing to him.... when i hang up around a hour later another call can from powweb... and the guy said he had called me earier but i must not of been at home.. which i wasn't then... i told him what had happen to me once i called them back.. and he just acted like that was nothing... then told me i needed to have my credit card counciled cause they think that someone got my credit card number.... wow...
then of course days later they canceled my site and promised to refund my money owned back... till this day i have not received a dime of my money back nor do they answer my emails to them.. so i just gave up.... believe me everyone if you go with this server you will have nothing but remorse.... thanks
I had switched to powweb from free hosts. I liked the features and the ability to put what ever I wanted for scripts etc on the site. I have noticed a fair bit of slow responses, or down time the whole time I have been with them but figured for the price its not a big deal. The customer service seemed pretty good at first. The migration to there new load balanced servers has not gone well so far. Not getting very far with customer support. Looking through the forums lots of complaints about FTP, PHP downloads and upload problems, and migration problems. I am actively looking for another host.
POWWEB used to be a great choice. Then the # of accounts rose and the overall quality fell.
Their new e-mail, called SquirrelMail constantly drops you when reading your mail. Sometimes it takes 3 - 4 times to connect.
But the main reason we left them is under their new migration, they will not allow any ports to be open or FOpenSocket command to be issued. Since we are a radio station, we must have this supported to allow interaction with our listeners for requests.
They also implemented Load Balancing about 1 year ago and the support was lacking. Our system stopped working, due to the dynamic IP assigning and trying to get a qualified answer to the problem took over 1 week.
Over-all --- used to be really good --- Recently --- Not worth the money.
After changing ownership they migrated servers and adopted the policy of bad customer service, unreliability, and bad technical support. The representatives answer the phone like you are inconveniencing their lives. At one point I felt like I should apologize for being a customer. The only time they did anything for all the problems was when I called to cancel all of my accounts they offered some free service, ignoring the fact that they still had not fixed my open support tickets with them and providing no explanation for the number and length of outages. They may be cheap, but save yourself the trouble of having to switch to someone else and never sign up.
I moved to PowWeb a few years ago because of bad customer service from my old host. I am in the process of moving again away from PowWeb. PowWeb was just purchased by Endurance International Group (EIG), a webhost buyout and consolidation company. They will be ripping out everything to homogenize PowWeb with the rest of EIG's owned webhosts. If you do a search on Google for any webhost bought by EIG, you will find nothing but complaints from customers about how customer-support and quality of the webhosting went downhill after the buyout. Even before EIG, PowWeb was spotty... uptime was hit and miss, and servers were slow on a good day. But the price was right and I liked the forums. However I can vouch for the other reviews here that they censor heavily and will delete posts and ban people if they complain about service, especially if the person provides detailed evidence. The EIG buyout was the last straw, so I'll be taking my business elsewhere. I have had former customers of other webhosts recently purchased by EIG contact me directly and privately confirming my research. I would stay away... PowWeb is going downhill.
My site almost every week will down for couple hours or slow for days!!!
They not realiable at all..When i post on forum asking for this they delete my post. And start monitoring every of my post since few of post been edited or delete! WTF!! Before delete my post, always blam at my script, saying to much this and that. Then when i said i used same web scripts on other host, they start delete my post or edit it.
They have long list of good testimonials about them. Maybe they just created all the testimonials. They only keep goog things about them.
Im now get ready to change to other host provider. Or maybe go for dedicate server. Too much problem with them.
I've switched a web design client of mine from powweb to a different web hosting company because basically Powweb's support hasn't ever been very helpful and my client's site was either sloowwwwwww or down at least once a week. Powweb doesnt seem to be able to handle the load. Cheap isn't always good.
I've got a client that does a ton of business on-line and needs a reliable web host. Reliable is not what Powweb is about.
Seems as if Powweb's servers are over saturated or services over sold or something. Something isn't right. As I said my client does a majority of their business on-line and their site cannot be down or slow or it will not be good business. Powweb's service seemed to be down completely or Slowwwwwwwwwww.... enough to time things out at least once a week. I've complained to powweb many of times about not being happy with their services and support and they simply blew it off with a 'sorry letter' thats great but doesn't always cut the cheese.
Powweb offers what they call 'On-Line Support' but it seems anytime I've gone into ask a question on their on-line support regarding anything very technical they cannot answer my question and tell me to contact their support by e-mail. Which made me think 'OK, Why have on-line support line if your support staff on-line doesnt even bother to look into the problem and give u an update or let you know that they let an admin know about it and is working on it' Seems as if the on-line support is more of a candy coat to get new customers but the on-line support is more of a screening than of any kind of help. I could go on and on. I really can't say anything good about their support other than their support forum looks pretty.
I cannot recommend powweb. They've caused my client, and myself too many headaches.
1 - 2 hours to connect to customer service......my webnaster and friend told me that Powweb suc- s and I then went to check it out. Ues folks....even today.....Feb 6, 06 the site was down for the morn. A client called me, but I told her that I couldnt show her my work because POWWEB was down. GOOD BYE to the people of Powweb. Cheap is not always good.
When I first signed up with Powweb it was a couple of years ago. I'd done my best to figure out what was a good host. I finally decided on Powweb because a friend of mine (much more savvy at the whole IT thing than I) suggested it.
And I am glad she did!
Powweb has never been anything but helpful and prompt when I faced them with problems (for instance I had a legal issue with my original site name that someone was threatning to sue me for trademark infringement--I decided to register a 2nd name and discontinue the host service on that one---and Once I explained the situation to Powweb customer service and Billing---they totally gave me a great deal and I didn't have to pay at all for the switch! now THAT is great customer service!)
(when I read some of the reviews other people wrote about this company I was thinking....what company are they talking about? It's not the one I'm using!)
Granted Powweb does have a tendency to just up and do things--but two of the greatest tools on their site are the Forums (which you can take a look at even if you don't use them) and the 24/7 tech support chat room. Which I have always found very helpful.
As for cost and downtime--
I think the cost is more than reasonable for what you get:
5000MB Diskspace
300GB Bandwidth
and hey, 7 odd bucks a month? (after the first year you have the option to pay quarterly which is what I do to make it smoother on my wallet).
I'm sorry if I sound like I love the company....
But I do.
They've done well by me and keep my site up and running.
I get great customer service.
My site is almost always up. (I can count on 1 hand the number of times it has been down in the last few years. And by the law of averages that;'s pretty darn good.)
I've 3 websites hosted with powweb since I'm quite satisfied with their package and service. At the time when I signed up (or even now), there were few webhosting svcs offered many capabilities such as that of powweb. One would be cronjob.
The customer support sometimes a bit slow to respond, but I haven't had any major problems so far.
I tried these guys out for a month and I had tons of downtime. Definitely goin gthrough growing pains. But the worst part was that they delete negative posts about them from their support forums. This is a major red flag. Any company that has to hide their negative posts tells me that they have a lot to hide.
I quit my account before my 30 day money back gurantee expired, and, in the middle of my 7 day waiting period, I received a standard cancellation "reconsideration" request, where they offered me more space and personal, mind you, personal customer support if I reactivated my account.
First off, I quit because I had a simple question that they down right refused to answer. After 7-10 emails between customer support trying to get my question answered, before being bounced around to different addresses to correspond to, I cancelled my account. I replied to this Email saying, if you answer my simple question, I will reconsider my cancellation.
It was 4 days before I got a reply. I think that speaks for itself. If you're trying to impress your customer by offering a higher expectation in customer support, you better deliver.
And by the way, my question still hasn't been answered.
I don't know where to start, so I'll go down the list. Customer support. What customer support?? They offer a live chat which, although helpful for easy questions, often refers you to alternative email addresses that more often than not, give you different answers then what the live chat operators provide. (This has contributed to a lot of misleading, and sometimes expensive solutions).
Pricing. That's the only thing I can rate well. I signed up with a 2 year free coupon for 2 years, so 4 years total at $186 was very appealing. Unfortunately, the free domain at the time, now has cost me $30 for 2 years since I cancelled my account.
Reliability. Hah. Funny. Three days downtime the day I signed up.
I do not understand why Powweb is rated so highly from the other reviewers, they must be plants of the company. Anyone who visits powwebs forums can plainly see (although they routinely delete posts that shine a negative light on their company) that they have been having consistent problems with uptime and database connectivity.
Consistent Database connection problems. Consistent server connection problems. Slow server response during peak hours of day (pacific time). Poor/rude customer service.
If you are on a budget and play with web development from time to time PowWeb may be an option for you. Though I wouldnt recommend it since even part time designers need reliable access. 5 thumbs down.
Again, all one has to do is view Powwebs customer forums to see they have consistenly unreliable service and virtually non-existent customer service. I've been a customer 10 months and haven't went online yet due to consistent problems. Your review needs to be revised. I (and probably others) picked Powweb becuase of it and reget it.
I am using pow web for some time,to be honest
pow web offers the best hosting i have seen recently.
my site availability is almost 100%,
so much extras,disk space and bandwidth is fantastic, though it doesnt affect the server status,Very helpful staff, and afterall they have a community chatroom, where the pow web users and support staff meeting place and its open 365/24/7 and always someone available to talk to incase of problems, and support staff has solved my few concerns in a matter of minutes, and beleive me they offer technical advice such as website scripts ... its just fantastic,
and i have never came across such a host like Pow-web,
after so many disapointing hosts in the past i have finally reached pow web, which i should have signed up long time ago!
its just simple as that..
if you want a verygood host then take my word, you should signup with pow web..
many thanks
Rohan
This host is okay to start with, but lately they problems ahve been adinng up. Recently they upgraded the package to 5gb storage and 300gb transfer which is really incredible. However what's the point of having that much if you can only have 5 domains and have hourly restrictions on hits. If you go over the hourly limit your site is shut down. fortunately my site is not that popular, but if it were I would be very concerned.
Anyhow, I"m leaving because I cannot have more domains and the domains I do have do not come with email services.
Nover go to powweb.com again. Cheating company. Says zero down time. But it is 100% down time. I lost lot of my visitors because of this cheating company.
When you ever you to powweb.com home page, it says the promotion ends in hours. But it never ends. It is a big cheating.
I've had a horrible experience with powweb. I waited 1 hour and 44 minutes to speak to a billing representative. When I finally got a hold one, I was ready to chew them out. That was until he told me he was the only one working billing. After hearing that, I tried to calm myself down and thought, instead of punishing him by chewing him out, I will instead punish the company by taking my business elsewhere. In addition, I am taking to the forums and reviews and letting people know what kind of things they can expect from this company. They might be cheap, but you know what they say, "You get what you paid for". If you have a business, you better stay away. If you're just looking for something low maitenance (like for a personal site), and have low standards in a hosting company, then this company is for you. Serious businesses want accountability and reliability! On a scale of 1 to 10, I give them a 3. I've read the other reviews that this company is getting and only one thing comes to mind, they probably paid for those good reviews. I am a paying customer so take my word for it! Hope this review helps.
Very good bang for the buck when I signed on two years ago (Jan '03.)
Their uptime is generally very good. The server's response time is very good.
The active forum is a huge plus. The forum members are very, very friendly, knowledgable and helpful.
One feature they've implemented that I've found a huge success is greylisting of email. Go to http://www.greylisting.org for details on the implementation. The end result is that it effectively blocks spam from most mass mailings and zombie computers. It reduced the spam to my mailbox by approx 97%.
But, Powweb has a serious problem with making large changes without adequate notice.
More than once they've implemented anti-spam tactics that have caused a lot of legitimate mail to get rejected, without any notice to the recipient. No advanced notice of the changes. Most of us didn't find out until someone told us that they'd sent an email and we'd never answered.
They've performed other large infrastructure changes, which will probably provide better uptime in the future, but were performed without notice, and they sometimes broke existing scripts.
The log files have been exhibiting corrupt entries and have been documented to be dropping log entries from Aug '04 through Feb '05 (so far) and Powweb refuses to acknowledge that they're broken. Approx 15% of log entries are dropped and approx 15% of the rest are corrupt.
When they do announce changes, they're almost always posted to their announcement forum at the time they're being implemented. Since the forum subscription software doesn't send send the notification email until 2:00am, that means most people learn of the change after the fact.
Even with all this, they're not horrible. The forum and the greylisting are almost enough to keep me. But they have sufficient competition at this price level that I'm currently researching a new host.
For my first year, I have had very few problems other than slow response time from support. However in the last 3 weeks their have been heaps of issues that are not gettting resolved.
Dependable cheap service, but still not very configurable. Support is lacking. Today I tried online chat but no one was there to answer my questions. Eventually I found answers in FAQ's.
Powweb is the best host I have ever hosted with. Their service is excellent and their servers are always up. One of the things I like best about Powweb is their forum. The forum is very active and friendly.
Powweb is a very good host. I was looking around for hosts and Powweb seemed to offer very good value for money. Their plan is excellent for me as i have a pictures gallery website which takes up large amounts of bandwidth. Their support is also good.
